Simple Hard Things

~ photo courtesy of q5

We can make the simple easy by toiling up the learning curve.

Simple and easy, two words that are close together in meaning and the ideas they convey, but that should not be confused with each other. It is a difference that becomes all the more important when we give or receive advice.

Things that are simple are not complex; it does not take much effort to teach the process necessary to complete a simple action. This does not make doing the action easy. Simple tasks or actions can become easy with practice and when we have had that practice it is easy to forget how hard they were when we were learning them.

Think about throwing a Frisbee, something that is simple enough to do but hard to be good at when we are out of practice. As we release we have too much angle and the disc goes flying into the ground or way up in the air before reversing course to smack us in the head. But as we learn to keep the disk level and get the hang of launching it with a snap of the wrist it will fly true.

Growing and changing our lives is like that. When we are in the thick of making a change the path may be simple, but that does not mean that it is easy. We should not allow ourselves to feel discouraged when the problems we are wrestling with fly at an odd angle and come back to smack us upside the head. Instead we need to understand that every wrestling match is just one more training bout before the title fight and the title fight is the match we need to win.

This is particularly important when someone tells us something is easy or to just do this or that and everything will be fine. We have to know that from where they are standing, from their years of practice, what we are doing looks simple and easy, however we still have the learning curve ahead of us. We must not give up when the simple things prove not to be the easy things.